We are interested in biological mechanisms which affect DNA sequence divergence (such as gene rectifcation, transposition, duplication and deletions). In principle if one knew a subset of the rules governing DNA sequence divergence one could uncover additional mechanisms at work by the discovery of cases which did not fit the original subset. We propose here to acquire and analyze a suitable set of DNA sequences (mouse beta-globins) in order to find our whether this approach is indeed capable of uncovering mechanisms at work in the cell which are presently not defined. While the initial phases of this project will deal heavily with clonging, gene characterization, sequencing and methods of computer analysis, the long tern goals are to uncover interesting mechanisms of sequence divergence and to explore these biochemically. In order to do the sequence analyses we plan to characterize the globin loci from several species of mice from the families Muridae and Cricetidae. This characterization should also allow us to additionally explore several issues of gene organization and regulation. We intend to find out whether the middle repetitive dispersed sequence elements in mice behave as mobile elements. We hope to collect more invormation on the divergence history of the fur pseudo-genes we have previously discovered within the beta locus in Mus musculus. We also plan to characterize at the level of DNA sequence the unique globin regulatory variants in Peromyscus previously defined by Dr. Lee Snyder. The computer analyses that we intend to pursue initially involve the distribution of deletions in the globin locus, and the point mutation spectra in sequences under selection versus those in sequences thought to not be under selection.